Room to Move: The Negotiation Talk

CompleteB2Business Communication,Business vocabulary,Communication,Reading,Speaking,Vocabulary

Main objectives of this material

Develop advanced vocabulary for negotiating price and terms, including fixed expressions such as sticking point, ballpark figure, bottom line, walk-away point, room to manoeuvre, and trade-off, together with their verb partners make a concession, reach a compromise and hit a sticking point.
Strengthen reading and speaking skills by analysing a supplier negotiation case study, working out where each side still had flexibility, and discussing real negotiations from students' own working lives in three escalating role-play scenarios.
Learn and practise the language of resisting, conceding and closing, using push back on, meet halfway, throw in and split the difference, and recognise which phrases belong in a written offer and which belong in a spoken meeting.

What students are going to cover

In this lesson, students will explore how experienced negotiators reach agreement without giving away what matters, through the story of a supplier contract that almost collapsed over price. Before class they read the case study, build ten fixed negotiation phrases and check their own answers, so that class time is spent entirely on speaking. They then apply the language to a negotiation from their own work, mapping their room to manoeuvre against their walk-away point, and test it in three role plays that get harder each time. By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to state their limits politely, propose a trade-off in one sentence, and close an agreement in natural spoken English.